Magazine business not just bad, dismal
While Ad Age reported the magazine business lost 3,200 jobs during the third quarter of 2008, the New York Times closed Play, its respected sports magazine.
Mediabistro’s FishbowlNY posted an e-mail from Play editor Mark Bryant confirming that the quarterly magazine with a circulation of 1.1 million won’t be published in 2009. In October, Bryant said the future of Play was solid.
But since that time, it’s been decided that, “the company needs to make some pretty considerable cuts going forward,” said Bryant in his e-mail. Bryant added that Play was not losing money.
Meanwhile, Ad Age notes that back in June, there were 147,000 people working in magazines. The 3,200 positions cut June-September do not include the slew of job losses that have occurred since September.
The list of publishers eliminating jobs is constantly growing, and by Ad Age’s tally now includes Time Inc., Hearst, Conde Nast, American Express Publishing, M. Shanklen Communications, The Economist Group, Rodale and National Geographic.
Ed Koller, managing partner at recruiter Howard-Sloan-Koller Group, told Ad Age that, “I’ve been through four, maybe five of these. It hasn’t ever been like this.”